We may have somewhat shot our bolt on the movie titles – this one was too good to resist  but we are struggling to think of more. 

This year’s trip is a shortened end to end of Italy; we didn’t have the time for the full thing unless we went for a silly 100 mile/day pace which we are both getting too old for.  So we are doing Pisa to Catania in Sicily.  This is still 830 miles over 10 days with plenty of mountains so we don’t feel too much like shirkers.

Neither of us has cycled in Italy before and we are looking forward to experiencing:

·         Italian motorists – we imagine them to be very calm and sensible motorists with a minimum of gesticulations and ‘mama mias’

·         Speaking Italian – I got a book and it seems you just put a vowel on the end of every word; if the word already ends in a vowel you just add another one

·         Authentic Italian cooking – hopefully there will be Pizza Huts all over the place

·         Spotting the EXACT moment when pretty Italian girls put on 5 stone and grow moustaches (or maybe they go via some sort of pupae like a butterfly in reverse)

We will try and file a report each day as well as uploading the odd photie, though these might be a bit pants as we will have to use very low quality pictures to avoid bankrupting ourselves with roaming charges. Our route takes us past many famous tourist sites so hopefully Alan will pull his socks up and cycle fast enough (and faff little enough) to allow time to see some of them.